Littlefield Labs
Littlefield Labs 1
Capacity Management at Littlefield Labs
I. Introduction
There are 3 stations in the game called sample preparing, testing, and centrifuging, while there are 4 steps to process the jobs. Before the game started, we tried to familiarize with the process of the laboratories and calculating the costs (both fixed and variable costs) based on the information on the sheet given. We did not intend to buy any machines too early, as we wanted to see the demand fluctuation and the trend first. Thus, at the beginning, we did not take any action till Day 62.
II. Summary of actions
| Actions | Reasons | What should have been done |
62 | Buy Machine 1 | The revenue dropped and the utilizations of Machine 1 were constantly 1 or near 1 on the previous 5 days. | We should have bought both Machine 1 and 3 based on our calculation on the utilization rate (looking at the past 50 days data) during the first 7 days. Thus should have bought earlier, probably around day 52 when utilization rate hit 1. |
66 | Buy Machine 3 | Both Machine 1 and 3 reached the bottleneck rate as the utilizations at day 62 to day 66 were around 1. Moreover, we also saw that the demand spiked up. | Should have bought earlier, probably around day 55 when the utilization hits 1 and the queue spiked up to 5 |
98 | Buy Machine 1 | The utilization of Machine 1 on day 88 to day 90 was around 1. | Should have bought it earlier, perhaps around day 90 |
133 | Buy Machine 3 | We bought Machine 3 in view of the decrease in revenue and sudden spike in queue number in step 3. Initially we were reluctant to buy it earlier since we thought we cannot recoup the fixed cost | Should have bought earlier, probably around day 100 when utilization reached 1 |
| Change prioritization of Machine 2 to Step 2 | After buying machine 3, we thought that step 3 would be much faster than step 1, thus the next step (step 4) can afford to wait. | |
| Change the prioritization of Machine 2 to
Capacity Management at Littlefield Labs
I. Introduction
There are 3 stations in the game called sample preparing, testing, and centrifuging, while there are 4 steps to process the jobs. Before the game started, we tried to familiarize with the process of the laboratories and calculating the costs (both fixed and variable costs) based on the information on the sheet given. We did not intend to buy any machines too early, as we wanted to see the demand fluctuation and the trend first. Thus, at the beginning, we did not take any action till Day 62.
II. Summary of actions
| Actions | Reasons | What should have been done |
62 | Buy Machine 1 | The revenue dropped and the utilizations of Machine 1 were constantly 1 or near 1 on the previous 5 days. | We should have bought both Machine 1 and 3 based on our calculation on the utilization rate (looking at the past 50 days data) during the first 7 days. Thus should have bought earlier, probably around day 52 when utilization rate hit 1. |
66 | Buy Machine 3 | Both Machine 1 and 3 reached the bottleneck rate as the utilizations at day 62 to day 66 were around 1. Moreover, we also saw that the demand spiked up. | Should have bought earlier, probably around day 55 when the utilization hits 1 and the queue spiked up to 5 |
98 | Buy Machine 1 | The utilization of Machine 1 on day 88 to day 90 was around 1. | Should have bought it earlier, perhaps around day 90 |
133 | Buy Machine 3 | We bought Machine 3 in view of the decrease in revenue and sudden spike in queue number in step 3. Initially we were reluctant to buy it earlier since we thought we cannot recoup the fixed cost | Should have bought earlier, probably around day 100 when utilization reached 1 |
| Change prioritization of Machine 2 to Step 2 | After buying machine 3, we thought that step 3 would be much faster than step 1, thus the next step (step 4) can afford to wait. | |
| Change the prioritization of Machine 2 to